Anyone who doubted Pierre Laval's astuteness will have retained few
of the doubts after reading the evidence the former Prime Minister has been giving at the Main trial. He clearly did what he liked with the Court, and was able to put a plausible guise on every shady transaction he had been concerned in. If his pleading can be so superficially effective on behalf of Petain something a good deal more spectacular can be looked for when his own trial begins. But the flimsiness of the structure is demonstrated by one striking episode. Laval related in detail a conversation he had with the Duke of Windsor (then Prince of Wales) in 5935 on the whole Abyssinian situation and the proposed Hoare-Laval settlement in particular, as a result of which the Prince promised to put the whole case before his father, King George V. The Duke of Windsor's immediate denial that on the occasion in question he discussed politics at all suggests clearly enough what the credibility of such a witness is. But if there was someone still alive to refute this particular statement many of the people who might have refuted others are dead.
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